Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management

The Ministers of the Environment from the Baltic Sea Countries and the High Representative of the European Commission in November 2007, within the framework of HELCOM, adopted the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP) concerning the Baltic Proper, the Gulf of Riga and the Gulf of Finland. The goal of the action plan is to achieve good environmental status by 2021.The action plan consists of around 150 different activities in four main segments and another four sections. The main segments cover eutrophication, hazardous substances, biodiversity and nature conservation including fisheries, and maritime activities. The other four sections concern development of assessment tools and methodologies, awareness raising and capacity building, financing and implementation and revision of the Baltic Sea Action Plan.

According to the plan the Baltic Sea Countries are to develop national programmes and submit them for HELCOM assessment at a HELCOM ministerial meeting in May 2010. For euthrophication, measures are to be implemented by 2016 at the latest, with the exception of certain measures in the waste water sector where other timetables are established in adopted recommendations.

The present document is a report from a joint co-operation project between Sweden and the Russian Federation “Capacity for Compliance with Baltic SeaAction Plan named RusNIP.

The greatest challenge in BSAP is to reduce nutrient inputs. Under the preliminary burden sharing, the Russian Federation is to reduce its nitrogenin puts by 6,970 tonnes and its phosphorus inputs by 2,500 tonnes, based mainly on discharge figures for year 2000.

The principal sources of nitrogen and phosphorus inputs are municipal waste water treatment plants and agriculture. The industry sector, mainly the forest products industry, the chemical industry, the metal industry, single household sewage systems and forestry also contribute.

Specific measures regarding euthrophication caused by discharges from major point sources are, as far as possible, discussed in this plan. Municipal waste water treatment plants (sized for more than 10,000 inhabitants) and waste water treatment in the forest, chemical and metal industry are discussed and measures to improve waste water treatment are proposed. The agricultural pollution is dealt within the EU BaltHazAR agri project managed by Project Implementation Unit, PIU established in the HELCOM secretariat aiming at improvements in manure management. The ongoing and proposed measures presented below for waste water treatment plants signify a reduction in inputs of approximately 7,200 tonnes of nitrogen and around 2,000 tonnes of phosphorus to Gulf of Finland and 1,700 tons of nitrogen and 360 tons of phosphorus to Baltic Proper.

The Russian BSAP preliminary obligations for the Gulf of Finland, 4,145 tonnes of nitrogen and 1,661 tonnes of phosphorus, will be met by the on-going measures within SUE St. Petersburg Vodokanal. Nevertheless, there are a number of plants in urgent need of either upgrading and reconstruction especially within Leningrad Oblast to meet the HELCOM Recommendations for municipal waste water treatment agreed in the BSAP. Five treatment plants located near the coastline of Gulf of Finland have been proposed as priorityplants based on their potential for nutrient reductions. Those are; Kingisepp 100,000 people, Sosnovy Bor 70,000 people, Vyborg 100,000 people, Gatchina 100,000 people, and Sertolovo 70,000 people.

Regarding the Baltic Proper actions in Kaliningrad oblast are needed in order to fulfil the Russian BSAP preliminary obligations, 2,821 tonnes of nitrogen and 724 tonnes of phosphorous These obligations will not be met by the proposed measures. Further actions are accordingly needed in smallertows and/or within the agricultural sector. This has to be further investigatedby Russian Federation as soon as possible. The following plants are proposedas priority plants; Kaliningrad 475,000 people, Zaostrovje 40,000 people, Chernjahovsk 42,000 people, and Gvardejsk 15,000 people.

The priority measures in point sources are in the municipal waste watertreatment sector as the measures within the industrial sector would give onlyminor reductions,

In addition Russia contributes to transboundary loads. Thus, Russia has to reduce the phosphorus load to the Gulf of Riga with 114 tons by upgrading waste water treatment to meet HELCOM recommendations and other measures in Russia, which covers 1/3 of the river Daugava drainage basin. This is based on the information available regarding the size of the population living in this area at the time for the Krakow meeting. Within this project it has not been possible to identify the sources and what measures to be taken. This issue has to be further elaborated by Russia within the HELCOM work by the ministerial meeting in 2013.

Due to high retention of phosphorous (ca 70%) and nitrogen (ca 30%) in Lake Ladoga and Lake Pepsi, the sources upstream of these lakes have not been proposed as priority. The measures in these would not be cost-effective in reducing pollution to the Baltic Sea. Information concerning some sewage treatment plants and industries upstream of Lake Ladoga is, however, given.

Since the load will vary between years, a way to describe the loads reduction requirements is to show maximum allowable inputs for each country and basin. For Russia the maximum allowable inputs are for nitrogen 84,420 tonnes and for phosphorus 4,183 tonnes.

The HELCOM expert workshop of June 2009 pointed out that the current allocation model for the country-wise nutrient reductions is in some cases based on uncertain figures for treatment levels of eg the sewage treatment plants and an update to that information would be needed since a lot of changes and improvements in waste water treatment have taken place. The maximum allowable inputs and burden sharing are under discussion within HELCOM and will be reviewed for the 2013 Ministerial Meeting.